Family Financial Pressure and Maternal and Adolescent Socioemotional Adjustment: Moderating Effects of Kin Social Support in Low Income African American Families

The moderating effect of kinship social support on the association of family financial pressure with socioemotional adjustment was examined in 200 African American mothers and adolescents. Financial pressure was positively associated with mothers’ depressive symptoms and negatively related to mothers’ optimism about the future. Financial pressure was also positively associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms and problem behavior. Kin social support was negatively linked to mothers’ depressive symptoms and positively associated with optimism. Kin support was negatively related to adolescents’ problem behavior. Kinship support moderated the association of family financial pressure with mothers’ and adolescents’ adjustment. Positive association of financial pressure with mothers’ depression was less apparent for mothers with more compared to less kin social support. Also, negative association of financial pressure with mothers’ optimism was less apparent for mothers with more compared to less kin social support. Positive relation of financial pressure with adolescents’ problem behavior was less apparent for those with more compared to less kin social support. The need to assess the links of kin social support to other domains of family life such as marital relations is discussed.     

Mechanisms of change in cognitive behaviour therapy for panic disorder: The role of panic self-efficacy and catastrophic misinterpretations

The efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PD) is well-established; however, little is known about the underlying change processes of clinical improvement during therapy. According to cognitive theories, CBT for PD primarily works by changing catastrophic misinterpretations of bodily symptoms and panic attacks. However, panic self-efficacy, i.e. the perceived ability to cope with panic attacks, has also been suggested as an important change mechanism in CBT for PD. The aim of the study was to investigate if change in catastrophic misinterpretations and panic self-efficacy mediated change in the level of anxiety during the course of thirteen sessions of group CBT for PD. Forty-five participants completed weekly self-report measures of the possible cognitive mediators and the level of anxiety throughout therapy. The results indicated that within-person change in panic self-efficacy in one session, but not in catastrophic misinterpretations, predicted within-person level of anxiety symptoms the following week. However, in a reversed analysis, prior change in level of anxiety symptoms also predicted change in panic self-efficacy the following session. These results support panic self-efficacy as a mediator of change in CBT for PD, although a reciprocal causal relationship between panic self-efficacy and level of anxiety seems to be implied.     

Context-dependent olfactory learning in an insect

We studied the capability of the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus to select one of a pair of odors and to avoid the other in one context and to do the opposite in another context. One group of crickets was trained to associate one of a pair of odors (conditioned stimulus, CS1) with water reward (appetitive unconditioned stimulus, US+) and another odor (CS2) with saline solution (aversive US, US-) under illumination and to associate CS1 with US- and CS2 with US+ in the dark. Another group of crickets received training of the opposite stimulus arrangement. At 1 d after the training for 3 d, the former group significantly preferred CS1 over CS2 under illumination but preferred CS2 over CS1 in the dark, and the latter group exhibited the opposite odor preference. The results of control experiments showed that the background light condition had no significant effects on memory formation or retrieval unless it was explicitly associated with US during training. Thus, the visual context affected learning performance only when crickets were requested to use it to disambiguate the meaning of CSs and to predict USs.     

Gender differences in judgments of multiple emotions from facial expressions

The authors tested gender differences in emotion judgments by utilizing a new judgment task (Studies 1 and 2) and presenting stimuli at the edge of conscious awareness (Study 2). Women were more accurate than men even under conditions of minimal stimulus information. Women's ratings were more variable across scales, and they rated correct target emotions higher than did men.     

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat: spontaneous expressions of medal winners of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games

Facial behaviors of medal winners of the judo competition at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games were coded with P. Ekman and W. V. Friesen's (1978) Facial Affect Coding System (FACS) and interpreted using their Emotion FACS dictionary. Winners' spontaneous expressions were captured immediately when they completed medal matches, when they received their medal from a dignitary, and when they posed on the podium. The 84 athletes who contributed expressions came from 35 countries. The findings strongly supported the notion that expressions occur in relation to emotionally evocative contexts in people of all cultures, that these expressions correspond to the facial expressions of emotion considered to be universal, that expressions provide information that can reliably differentiate the antecedent situations that produced them, and that expressions that occur without inhibition are different than those that occur in social and interactive settings.     

Language-dependent access to autobiographical memory in Japanese-English bilinguals and US monolinguals

Japanese bilinguals retrieved autobiographical memories in response to 20 English and 20 Japanese cue words. US monolinguals were cued with 40 English words. All participants reported one earliest memory. Japanese bilinguals retrieved more memories and earlier memories when cued with Japanese words. They also retrieved more memories when the cue language matched either the language of memory encoding or the language of first thought. Although English cues elicited equivalent numbers of English and Japanese memories in the more fluent speakers of English, Japanese words elicited significantly larger numbers of Japanese memories in all Japanese-English bilinguals. The average age of cued autobiographical memories was significantly earlier for US than for Japanese students but age of the earliest memory did not differ.     

Ethnic differences in affect intensity,emotion judgments,display rule attitudes,and self-reported emotional expression in an American sample

Research of the past two decades has shown that cultures exert considerable influence over emotion. Most, if not all, of the cross-cultural research reported to date have been on samples obtained in different countries. Although it is important to address questions of cross-cultural similarities and differences via the testing of between-country differences, we need to be concerned with possible cultural differenceswithin countries as well. The assessment of cultural differences within countries would have implications for not only our conceptual understanding of cultural influences on emotion, but also our empirical methods and procedures. In this study, American subjects were self-classified into one of four ethnic groups, and provided us with data concerning affect intensity, display rule attitudes, self-reported emotional expression, emotion labeling, and intensity ratings. The results indicated considerable differences in emotion judgments, display rules, and self-reported emotional expressions as a function of ethnicity within an American sample. The differences are discussed in terms of the need to search for psychologically meaningful and relevant definitions of culture which would cut across ethnicity or country.     

Confusions about context in the judgment of facial expression: A reply to “the contempt expression and the relativity thesis”

A recent study of the effect of context in the judgment of contempt facial expression (Russell, 1991) was flawed by several confusions about what constitutes context. We argue that the context used should have ecological validity, through the use of many, rather than a few, facial expressions, which are spontaneous rather than posed, and which are judged by carefully selected judgment tasks, using clearly defined or well-understood emotional terms. The confusion in Russell's work between accuracy studies and agreement studies is also addressed.Paul Ekman's work is supported by a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 06092). David Matsumoto's research is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 42749).